


Against The Cold

by blanketed_in_stars



Series: 12 Days of Shipmas [11]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bad Wolf Bay, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 05:10:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5526626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Fancy finding you here,” he says, and Rose shakes herself and smiles. He’s wrapped in a coat against the wind, and a scarf too, looking so human. “Your mum’s wondering where you are.”</p><p>“She knows,” Rose says. “She just asks so you’ll come find me and bring me back.”</p><p>The Doctor grins wide enough that his eyes crinkle, same as always, and his whole face glows. “Sure she isn’t trying to get rid of me?” he asks. “Sending me out to look for you, hoping I get lost and never return?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against The Cold

Sometimes Rose can’t believe he’s actually here. Has to pinch herself, or splash water on her face, or seek him out and ask him to whisper in her ear one more time. But that’s her last resort, because of the pain it causes him—and he’s always so hopeless at hiding it that she can see the ache written plainly across his face.

“Fancy finding you here,” he says now, and Rose shakes herself and smiles. He’s wrapped in a coat against the wind, and a scarf too, looking so human. “Your mum’s wondering where you are.”

“She knows,” Rose says. “She just asks so you’ll come find me and bring me back.”

The Doctor grins wide enough that his eyes crinkle, same as always, and his whole face glows. “Sure she isn’t trying to get rid of me?” he asks. “Sending me out to look for you, hoping I get lost and never return?”

The chill of the day isn’t as biting as those words. “Don’t say that,” Rose orders. “Don’t even joke about it.”

“Sorry.” The grin vanishes as he takes her hands. “You know I’m not going anywhere.”

“Do I?” Her fingers, stung numb from the flurries twirling down out of the clouds, warm a little in his grasp.

“Of course you do.” He leans down and kisses her softly. “Remember?”

She has to smile. “I think so.”

He wraps an arm around her shoulders and they stand leaning into each other, staring out at the bay and the little shelves of ice that bump against the shore. The sand beneath their feet is nearly all white. “Why do you come out here?”

Rose has asked herself that often enough, in sun and rain and now in snow. “It’s an in-between place,” she tells him, quiet because she knows he can hear when her head is resting against his shoulder. “Where you ended and where you began. For me, at least.” She turns to look up at him. “D’you wish I stayed away?”

“Oh, no.” He shakes his head, but he’s still staring out towards the horizon’s blinding blankness. “I don’t mind at all. It’s a very nice beach, even if the name is a little—well, ominous, all things considered.”

“I meant,” Rose says, “does it bother you that I keep coming to the place where we had to say good-bye? The place I very nearly told you to leave forever?”

The Doctor blinks into the wind. “If this is where you want to be, then it’s where you should be. I want that for you.”

“Oh.” It’s not that the answer’s unexpected, Rose thinks, but that the chord it strikes in her is wrong. Really, it’s only half an answer, she realizes. “And—where do you want to be?” she asks.

“Wherever you are, of course.” He says it with his usual easy grace, as if the words are as natural as the tide, as the flakes drifting down, as winter itself. She believes him.


End file.
